Dungeons & Dragons 5e playtests

Toast · 05-25-2012, 07:10 AM

To be fair, this is an alpha playtest where the options available were specifically chosen to be tested. The characters are pre-generated, the skill system is mostly non-existent, and the fighter has basically nothing to do but whack people.

Given that we probably haven't seen the breadth of spells, backgrounds, and themes available, let alone feats, I'm ok with keeping an open mind about how this will turn out. We also haven't seen a lot of the background mechanics, such as how to calculate bab, how number of spells and cantrips/orisons works, etc.

There's already some issues that are apparent just from reading through what is in the playtest. Sleep has no duration, ray of frost seems incredibly powerful for a low-level at will ability. You can automatically charm people by beating them down to 10hp or less. There doesn't seem to be any reason to use heavy armor unless you have a negative dex modifier or are a dwarf.

Those are things that I would houserule anyway. At first glance, the system seems very modular, and I like that because that's how I played AD&D (which was the last incarnation I played, not counting the pc games).

There doesn't seem to be quite the numbers bloat that 3.x had, which I like. There does seem to be a lot of extra dice rolling (advantage/disadvantage, poison, etc.) that could slow the game down a lot. Though it is difficult to tell at this point, character progression seems a lot flatter than previously, which is something that I personally like. I also like saves being based off ability scores, as I think that encourages more balanced stat distributions rather than min-maxing.

05-25-2012, 07:10 AM	#11
Toast Existential Toast Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Georgia Posts: 440	To be fair, this is an alpha playtest where the options available were specifically chosen to be tested. The characters are pre-generated, the skill system is mostly non-existent, and the fighter has basically nothing to do but whack people. Given that we probably haven't seen the breadth of spells, backgrounds, and themes available, let alone feats, I'm ok with keeping an open mind about how this will turn out. We also haven't seen a lot of the background mechanics, such as how to calculate bab, how number of spells and cantrips/orisons works, etc. There's already some issues that are apparent just from reading through what is in the playtest. Sleep has no duration, ray of frost seems incredibly powerful for a low-level at will ability. You can automatically charm people by beating them down to 10hp or less. There doesn't seem to be any reason to use heavy armor unless you have a negative dex modifier or are a dwarf. Those are things that I would houserule anyway. At first glance, the system seems very modular, and I like that because that's how I played AD&D (which was the last incarnation I played, not counting the pc games). There doesn't seem to be quite the numbers bloat that 3.x had, which I like. There does seem to be a lot of extra dice rolling (advantage/disadvantage, poison, etc.) that could slow the game down a lot. Though it is difficult to tell at this point, character progression seems a lot flatter than previously, which is something that I personally like. I also like saves being based off ability scores, as I think that encourages more balanced stat distributions rather than min-maxing. __________________ “How dare you! How dare you stand there acting like your brand of suffering is worse than anybody else’s. Well, I guess that’s the only way you can justify treating the rest of us like dirt.” ~ Major Margaret Houlihan (Mash) “If we’re going to be damned, let’s be damned for what we really are.” ~ Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation)